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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:26am on 2006-06-04 under

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2006-02-05:

"The motor car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of our present life. It long ago ran down Simple Living, and never halted to inquire about the prostrate figure which fell as its victim." -- Warren Harding, 1922.
(submitted to the mailing list by Kathleen Magone)

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There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
zenlizard: Because the current occupation is fascist. (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] zenlizard at 04:29pm on 2006-06-04
OH, that crap again. Nostalgia for the past that never was.

There is nothing, repeat, *nothing* "simple" about living with a lack of technology. You try being a subsistence farmer.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] realinterrobang.livejournal.com at 12:27am on 2006-06-05
Actually, being as I'm deep into transit and automobile history at the moment, I think he has a point, although I'm not sure it's the point you think he's making. For one thing, there's an awful lot of difference between "lack of automobiles" and "lack of technology" and the alternatives weren't "cars" or "subsistence farming," either. In some ways, the non-automotive transport forms of the time were higher technology than the cars.

I don't think he's talking about "a past that never was," either, so much as a disappearing present, since the world he lived in was changing rapidly, in large part thanks to the automobile and automakers, and would be almost completely gone a mere 35 or 40 years later.

I'd be more suspicious of someone who was born in the 1950s invoking that time or earlier, since they weren't there to see it firsthand.
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